Client Provisioning is a technology used by carriers, device manufacturers, and corporate IT (information technology) departments to carry out remote configuration of mobile devices on behalf of users. OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) Client Provisioning is a provisioning standard based on sending provisioning information to the client in the form of a Provisioning Content Document. The OMA Provisioning Content Document is divided into several parts called characteristics. These characteristics include PXLOGICAL, NAPDEF, BOOTSTRAP, CLIENTIDENTITY, VENDORCONFIG, APPLICATION and ACCESS. The APPLICATION characteristic is used to define application protocol parameters and to describe the attributes of an application service access point available using the protocol. Different applications require different sets of parameters and the current Provisioning Content Document template is not able to fulfill the requirements of all applications.
The APPLICATION characteristic template in the Provisioning Content Document is used to identify connectivity-level settings. In the current template for APPLICATION characteristic, the context of the application settings is identified by the parameter PROVIDER-ID. However, if the mobile device includes multiple application settings of the same type with the same PROVIDER-ID, the desired settings included in the APPLICATION characteristic cannot be precisely defined.
Thus, there is a need for more precise identification of the application settings indicated in the characteristics of a provisioning content document.